Stock futures were roughly flat Thursday evening, as futures steadied following declines earlier in the day.
The three major indices ended Thursday’s session lower, and the Dow ended a four-day winning streak, after new data showed a greater than expected number of new jobless claims were filed last week.
A rotation out of tech stocks also continued during Thursday’s session, with the information technology and Amazon-heavy consumer discretionary sectors among the laggards in the S&P 500. Shares of each of Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft and Apple fell on Thursday before holding near unchanged during the overnight session. Peloton, another high-growth stock viewed as a winner of the “stay-at-home” trade, also fell after UBS downgraded the stock on valuation concerns.
Peer tech giant Netflix (NFLX) saw its stock slump in after-hours trading after delivering a weak outlook for the current quarter, suggesting the streaming company’s incredible surge of new users would slow in the second half of the year. Netflix expects to add 2.5 million new users in the third quarter – half as many as consensus analysts anticipated. Still, the company’s 10 million new users in the second quarter were better than the 8.3 million expected.
On Friday, BlackRock (BLK) and Ally Financial (ALLY) will round out a heavy week of earnings from banks and other financial institutions, with these companies’ earnings set for release before market open.
On the economic data front, the Commerce Department is set to report June housing starts and building permits, with the report expected to show an extended recovery in the housing market with both starts and permits rising above 1 million. The University of Michigan’s preliminary July Surveys of Consumers, also due out Friday morning, will likely show a third straight month of improvement in consumer sentiment, albeit to a level below that from before the pandemic.
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Here were the main moves at the start of the overnight session for U.S. equity futures, as of 6:05 p.m. ET:
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S&P 500 futures (ES=F): 3,195.75, up 1.25 points or 0.04%
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Dow futures (YM=F): 26,559.00, up 6 points, or 0.02%
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Nasdaq futures (NQ=F): 10,528.00, up 16.25 points, or 0.15%
Two men wearing a masks walks pass the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) on April 30, 2020 in New York City. – Wall Street stocks opened lower Thursday following another spike of jobless claims in the wake of coronavirus shutdowns, offsetting strong results from tech giants. Another 3.84 million US workers filed for unemployment benefits last week and the total has now passed 30 million in six weeks, according to the Labor Department data. (Photo by Johannes EISELE / AFP) (Photo by JOHANNES EISELE/AFP via Getty Images)
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